The film was released on 7 January 2016 in Germany by Warner Bros. Pictures, and is expected to be released in the United States and Canada in 2017 by Freestyle Releasing Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is one of the most popular students at her college and enjoys an active social life with many friends and family members. She is active on social networks and has over 800 friends on Facebook. She lives with three friends, Olivia (Brit Morgan), Isabel (Brooke Markham) and Gustavo (Sean Marquette). She is also close friends with Kobe (Connor Paolo) and is dating Tyler (William Moseley). Laura receives a friend request from a student at her campus, Marina. Seeing her talents in animation, she accepts the request and begins a friendship with the lonely girl. Laura is Marina’s first Facebook friend and her profile is plastered in bizarre and disturbing images. Marina’s obsessive behavior begins to make Laura feel uncomfortable. However, when Laura shares a picture of herself at her birthday dinner – to which Marina was not invited – Marina publicly and angrily confronts Laura at her college campus. In the quarrel, Laura accidentally pushes Marina and her hood falls off, revealing Marina’s hairless head, and she runs away. Marina tries to apologize to Laura who unfriends her on Facebook. Seeing her number of friends down to zero, she angrily closes her laptop. That night, Marina records her suicide with her webcam, which automatically uploads the footage to social media.

Next morning, Laura receives a message from Marina containing the video of her suicide. Later on, it is posted to her Facebook page. Laura is unable to remove the video, and her friend count drops. Left with no choice, she tries to delete her account, but an unknown error occurs. When Kobe and Laura investigate Marina’s Facebook page, they realize that the source code where it has been written in is not the normal code.